The Two Minute Rule Part 32

"Alison was a paid informant?"

Marki made an uneasy grin and shrugged.

"She wasn't getting rich or anything. She told me they had some kinda cap or something on the amount. Every time she wanted some money this guy hadda get it approved."

Holman said, "Did she tell you who she worked for?"

"Uh-uh."

Holman looked back at Pollard, but Pollard was still pale. Holman touched her arm.

"Anything else?"

Pollard shook her head.

Holman peeled off another hundred and slipped it into Marki's hand.

Chapter 37.

A DEPRESSED ACTRESS named Peg Entwistle killed herself in 1932 by jumping from the top of the letter H. The letters were fifty feet tall, then and now, and these days the sign stretched some four hundred fifty feet across the top of Mount Lee in the Hollywood Hills. After years of neglect, the Hollywood Sign was rebuilt in the late seventies, but vandals and d.i.c.kweeds took their toll, so not long thereafter the city closed the area to the public. They surrounded the sign with fences, closed-circuit video cameras, infrared lights, and motion detectors. It was like they were guarding Fort Knox, which wasn't lost on Holman as he directed Pollard up to the top of Beachwood Canyon. Holman had been going up to the sign since he was a kid.

Pollard looked worried.

"You know how to get there?"

"Yeah. We're almost there."

"I thought we had to go through Griffith Park."

"This way is better. We're looking for a little street I know."

Holman still didn't think they would find anything, but he knew they had to look. Every new discovery they made brought them back to the police, and now they knew a policeman had also been connected to Alison Whitt. If Whitt told her contact officer about Anton Marchenko, then the cops might have known about the Hollywood Sign. Putting the sign together with Marchenko's fantasy would have inspired them to search the area. Richie might have been part of the search. Holman wondered if Alison Whitt had seen Marchenko in the news. It was likely. She had probably realized her pirate was the bank robber and offered up what she knew to her cop. This had probably inspired her death.

Pollard said, "These canyons are s.h.i.+t. I can't get a cell signal."

"Do you want to turn around?"

"No, I don't want to turn around. I want to check out whether or not this girl was really an informant."

"They have some kind of informant hotline you can call?"

"Don't try to be funny, Holman. Please."

They wound their way up narrow residential streets higher into Beachwood Canyon. The Hollywood Sign grew above them, sometimes visible between houses and trees and sometimes hidden by the mountain. When they reached the top of the ridge, Holman told her to turn.

"Slow down. We're coming up on it. You can pull over in front of these houses."

Pollard pulled over and they got out of the car. The street ended abruptly at a large gate. The gate was locked and was hung with a large sign reading CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC.

Pollard looked dubious as she studied the sign.

"This is your shortcut? It's closed."

"It's a fire road. We can follow it up around the peak to the back of the sign. This way cuts a couple of miles off going up through Griffith Park. I've been coming up here since I was a kid."

Pollard tapped the sign, CLOSED.

"Have you ever obeyed the law?"

"No, not really."

"Jesus Christ."

Pollard squeezed around the side of the gate. Holman followed, and they started up the road. It was steeper than Holman remembered, but he was older and in lousy shape. He was breathing hard before long, but Pollard seemed to be doing fine. The fire road joined with a paved road, and the paved road grew steeper as it curved around to the back side of the peak. The Hollywood Sign disappeared from view, but the radio tower perched above it steadily grew.

Holman said, "There's no way those guys brought all that money up here. It's too far."

"Marchenko brought his girlfriend up here."

"She could walk. Would you leave sixteen million laying around in a place like this?"

"I wouldn't rob thirteen banks and shoot it out with the cops, either."

The road wrapped around the back side of the mountain as they neared the peak, but curved to the front face again, and suddenlly all of Los Angeles spread out before them as far as Holman could see. Catalina Island floated in the mist almost fifty miles to the southwest. The pudgy cylinder of the Capitol Records Building marked Hollywood, and tight cl.u.s.ters of skysc.r.a.pers pushed up like islands dotting the cityscape sea from downtown to Century City.

Pollard said, "Wow."

Holman didn't give a d.a.m.n about the view. The Hollywood Sign was about thirty feet below them, walled off by a green six-foot chain-link fence that ran along the edge of the road. The radio tower waited at the end of the road, bristling with antennas and microwave dishes and surrounded by yet more fences. Holman waved his hand at the sign.

"There it is. You still think they buried the money up here?"

Pollard hooked her fingers into the fence and gazed down at the sign. The downslope was steep. The bases of the letters were too far below them to see.

Pollard said, "G.o.dd.a.m.n. Can you get down there?"

"Only if we climb the fence, but it isn't the fence you'd have to worry about. See the cameras?"

Closed-circuit video cameras were mounted on metal poles dotting the fence by the communications station. The cameras were trained on the sign.

Holman said, "These cameras watch the sign twenty-four hours a day. They have cameras all along the length of the sign and more cameras down below at the base so they can see it from all angles. They're also set up with infrared so they can watch it at night, and they have motion sensors."

Pollard stood on her toes, trying to see as far down the slope as possible, then squinted up the road at the communications station. A bristle of cameras sprouted at the station, too. Uphill from the road was a steep slope climbing another twenty or thirty feet to the summit. Pollard glanced uphill, then back to the cameras.

"Who's on the other end of the cameras?"

"The Park Service. Rangers are watching this thing twenty-four seven."

Pollard looked uphill again.

"What's up there?"

"Weeds. It's just the top of the hill. There's some old geologic survey gear, but that's all."

Pollard set off toward the communications station and Holman followed. She stopped from time to time to peer down at the sign.

She said, "Can we come up from below the sign?"

"That's why they have the motion detectors. The cameras at the bottom cover the approaching hillsides."

"d.a.m.n, it's steep. Does it flatten out at the base of the letters?"

"A little, but not much. It's more like a wide spot in a trail. The sign is pretty much set into the side of the mountain."

The communications station was surrounded by an even taller fence. The eight-foot fence was topped by barbed wire and concertina wire. The road they were on dead-ended directly into a gate that cut across the road like a wall. They were boxed in by the steep upslope on one side, the fence on the other, and the gate in front of them. Holman thought it felt like being in a chain-link tunnel.

Holman said, "There's supposed to be a helipad on the other side of the antenna, but I've never seen it. That's how they come up if someone triggers the alarms. They send a chopper."

Pollard stared up at the surrounding cameras, then gazed back along the road at the way they had come. She looked disappointed.

"You were right, Holman. This place is a f.u.c.king compound."

Holman tried to picture Richie and Fowler and the other two cops coming up here in the middle of the night, but just couldn't see it. If they suspected Marchenko had hidden the money at or near the sign, where and how would they search? The Hollywood Sign covered a lot of ground and even policemen couldn't approach the sign without being seen by the Rangers. Holman thought they might have tried telling the Rangers they were conducting an official police investigation, but the chances of that were slim. It would have been a bad move, made even worse by conducting their search at night. The Rangers would have had questions, and stories of the late-night search would have spread beyond the park. If they had tried to bluff their way past the Rangers they would have made their search during the day. Coming out at night meant their search had been a secret.

Pollard said, "You know what I'm thinking about?"

"What?"

"b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs."

Holman felt himself flush. He glanced away and cleared his throat.

"Yeah?"

Pollard turned in a little circle, spreading her arms at their surroundings.

"So Marchenko brings her up here to have s.e.x, what did he do, just drop trou for his b.l.o.w. .j.o.b right here in the road? Cameras are everywhere. Other people might come walking up the road. There isn't any privacy. This is a lousy place for a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b."

Holman was uncomfortable with Pollard talking about s.e.x. He glanced at her, but couldn't bring himself to make eye contact. She suddenly turned and stared up the steep slope rising above them.

"Is there a way up to the top?"

"Yeah, but nothing's up there."

"That's why I want to see it."

Holman realized her instincts were right. The summit was the only private place on the hill.

They squeezed between the hillside and the corner of the fence by the communication station, then scrambled up a narrow, steep path. It wasn't easy going like the fire road. Pollard twice fell to her knees, but pretty soon they crested the summit and reached a small clearing at the top of the hill. The only things up here were the survey equipment Holman remembered and brush. Pollard looked around at the 360-degree view that surrounded them and smiled.

"That's what I'm talking about! If they were doing the nasty, this is where they were doing it."

Pollard was right. From the clearing, they could see if anyone was approaching on the fire road. The cameras that dotted the fences were below them, and pointed downhill toward the sign. No one was watching the summit.

But Holman still didn't believe Marchenko and Parsons had buried their money up here. Carrying that much cash would have taken several trips, and each trip would have increased the odds they would be discovered. Even if they were stupid enough to bring the money up here, the hole needed to bury it would have been the size of five or six suitcases. It would have been difficult to dig in the rocky soil, and anyone else who visited the summit would have easily noticed the large area of disturbed soil.

Holman pointed out the heel prints and scuff marks that had been scratched into the clearing.

"Maybe he had the girl up here, but there's no way they brought the money. You see all these footprints? Hikers come up here all the time."

Pollard considered the prints, then walked around the edges of the clearing. She seemed to be studying it from different angles.

She said, "This little hill isn't so big. There's not a lot of room up here."

"That's my point."

Pollard gazed down at Hollywood.

"But why did he have to come up here to be with the girl? He could've pretended to be a pirate anywhere."

Holman shrugged.

"Why'd he rob thirteen banks dressed like a commando? Freaks happen."

Holman wasn't sure she heard him. She was still staring down into Hollywood. Then she shook her head.

"No, Holman, coming up here was important to him. It meant something. That's one of the things they taught us at Quantico. Even madness has meaning."

"You think that money was up here?"

She shook her head, but she was still staring down into the canyon.

"No. No, you're right about that. They didn't bury sixteen million dollars up here, and Fowler and your boy sure as h.e.l.l didn't find it and dig it up. That hole would look like a bomb crater."

"Okay."

She pointed down toward the city.

"But he lived right down there in Beachwood Canyon. You see it? Every day when he stepped out of his apartment, he could look up and see this sign. Maybe they didn't keep the money in their apartment or hide it up here, but something about this place made him feel safe and powerful. That's why he brought the girl up here."

"You can see forever. Maybe it made him feel like he was in a crow's nest, like on one of those old sailing s.h.i.+ps."

Pollard still wasn't looking at him. She was staring down into Beachwood Canyon like the answers to all of her questions were waiting to be found.